2/28 Dickinson Discussion Notes

1. Literal Meanings
1. 1699- Doing noble things will make you happier, without doing them  you can't be happy.
2. 872-The tiger's hunger can't be satisfied after he has had flesh, the speaker is comparing themselves to a tiger.

2. 872
1. The diction is formal because the poem is noble, authoritative
2. Interpretations:
1. Rapture is possibly referring to religious themes
1. "Cost us existence once" might be referring to Adam and Eve or another biblical allusion
2. The speaker could be spurning rapture, or acceptance into Heaven, by not doing noble deeds
2. The poem is about empathy
1. Joy is personified as a him, Rapture is personified as her. This might be allusion to gender stereotypes since Rapture is a stronger emotion and women are seen as more emotional
2. The poem might also be about the need for empathy in a relationship as seen in the use of "herself" and "him"

3. 1699
1. Interpretations
1. Religious- the poem is about resisting temptation( "as the vultures teased") by fasting. Berry of Domingo is an allusion to Sunday and the berry is what god gives you.
2. Colonization/ America as a country- America as a ship in the Maelstrom
1. Food imagery represents a hunger/ desire for colonization
2. Domingo is an allusion to colonization of Haiti
3. Slavery- The tiger is a metaphor for a slave that has tasted freedom( "finer famine")
1. The speaker "I" is a slave, or someone sympathetic to abolitionist cause.
2. Slaves are referred to as parts ("veins and tissues") because at the time they weren't seen as people. It's possible she is being sarcastic and criticizing those who treated slaves as less than human.
3. Dickinson is comparing the slave's desires to a savage hunger to emphasize her point that the desire for freedom is a primal urge and necessary to humanity.

Death as the only end to revenge.

While reading through the three Dickinson poems, I noticed a common theme of death as a release from vengeance. Although these poems are not necessarily morbid, they all focus on death as an outlet of escape. In 237, the speaker says after she is “out of sight- in Heaven” will she be forgiven, which infers that she has some sort of guilt and fears retribution from the person she has wronged. She even uses the phrase “con” to infer that she has somehow cheated the other person by dying. 1172 also includes a speaker that is fleeing from the vengeance of nature, which I take to mean man, by hiding away in the security of the tomb. Both of these poems illustrate that vengeance is, unfortunately, a part of human nature and so is the desire to evade it. By framing it as a literal matter of life and death, Dickinson emphasizes the prevalence of revenge in society. While 1509 takes the perspective of the seeker of vengeance, not the guilty party, it also furthers the idea of retribution seeking as life and death when the speaker admits that “Anger as soon as fed is dead” and that only after their revenge is enacted can they move on in their life. Similar to Ahab in Moby Dick, the speaker in 1509 demonstrates a monomaniac focus on revenge.